by Jason June
“I’m second-guessing everything.” I gave myself another up-down in the mirror while Max inspected me from the back.
“Your butt looks so good in those jeans,” he said clinically, like an art expert analyzing a gallery selection. “You’re welcome to borrow them again at any time.”
Despite Max’s assurances, I still had doubts about my overall look. “But he’s so tan and I’m so fracking pale. I’ll look like a ghost next to him.”
Max put his hands on my shoulders. I was surprised he could lift his arms with the huge shoulder pads on his blazer. “You’re going to be fine,” he said. “You know what always helps me when I’m nervous?”
“What?”
“Picturing Mr. Bogosian’s butt.”
“I do not want to be thinking about Mr. Bogosian’s ass right now!”
“Suit yourself,” Max said. “I happen to find Mr. B’s derriere quite uplifting. If ever I’m in a bad mood, Bogosian butt flashes through my head and voilà! My day is instantly better.”
All the butt talk made me think even more about what could go down that night. I was nervous. But I was also unbelievably excited. I felt like it was the night before Christmas and I’d be gifted Tony’s eggplant emoji in the flesh. Number seven was so going to get crossed off the Gay Agenda. Maybe even number eight.
I had to stop thinking about it or I’d explode in the pants Max had let me borrow, which didn’t seem appropriate in loaner jeans.
My phone buzzed.
Here.
“It’s Tony!” I screamed.
“Whoa, whoa! Calm down, or you’re going to mess up all our hard work.” Max swooped my bangs back into position, then gave me a final inspection. “Lord and Taylor, you look great. Now, remember, just be yourself, but no mentioning that this is only your second date, or that you’ve never seen a wiener before. And if Tony starts talking about things you know nothing about, just nod along and say, ‘Yeah, I totally agree,’ and everything will be fine.”
“Got it,” I said, fidgeting with the hem of my shirt. “You’re the best Gay Guide a guy could ask for!”
Max swatted at my hands. “It’s Jizz Genie, and don’t wrinkle that!” He opened the bathroom door and pushed me into the hall. “You’ll be great!”
I practically sprinted past the living room with a speedy wave to Mom and Dad cuddled on the couch.
“Hey, wait a minute,” Mom said, picking her head up from Dad’s chest. “Look at you!”
“So this is City Jay?” Dad took in my outfit, and that doe-eyed expression came over him again. It was like he was seeing me in a whole new light, which was weird because I really wasn’t dressed that differently: the V-neck was new, and Max’s jeans were tighter and more artfully bleach-splattered than my usual Levi’s.
“I guess you could say that,” I said.
“You look so . . . so . . . hip.”
“Dad, it’s not hip to say ‘hip.’”
“You look hip and handsome,” Mom added. “Your date is going to think you’re so cute.”
I face-palmed, worried that if my parents thought I was cute then I wasn’t at all exuding the let’s take off these pants vibe I wanted Tony to pick up on. “Ugh, gawd, okay, gotta go!”
“Be home by midnight, Jaybird!” Dad called.
I raced out of the house. Just as I was about to shut the front door, it was pulled back open.
“Mom?” She stood in the doorway, a shimmer of tears in her eyes. I instantly felt guilty for leaving the house when she finally got to stay home and not travel for her new job. But when I’d told her I had a date with a cute college guy (and that Max vouched for him, so that Dad would get off my case), the lovey-dovey romantic in her had insisted that I not stay around for my “silly old mom,” as she called herself. “Are you okay?” I asked.
Mom waved her hand and wiped her eyes. “I’m such a sap. I’m fine, I’m just . . .” She sighed. “I’m so excited for you. I know it wasn’t always easy in Riverton. I just wanted to say, you deserve this. Go out there and have the best time.” She pulled me in for a hug, tugging my head down to rest against her shoulder even though I was a good seven inches taller than she was. “Thanks, Mom.” My words were muffled in her shoulder. If she didn’t let go soon, Max would come out and kill her for messing up my hair. “I’ve got to go now.”
“Oh, all right.” She pulled away, mussing my bangs with that mom sixth sense that let her know it would annoy me. “Just a heads-up, next time you go out, I need to meet this boy. I know he’s in college, and you’re technically an adult now, but that doesn’t mean I don’t need to give the go-ahead on who’s allowed to see my only son.”
I looked over my shoulder at Tony waiting in his shiny black BMW. “Okay, Mom. You got it. I should go.”
I turned to head to Tony’s car, but Mom reached out and stopped me. “One more thing,” she said, then paused, pursing her lips. “Well, two. Since he’s in college, I expect alcohol is more involved in his life than yours. If he drinks, do not let him drive you home. If you drink, be safe, Uber back here, and don’t tell your father.” Then she reached in her pocket and pulled out a condom.
I wanted to throw up.
I looked over my shoulder again, horrified that Tony might be able to see that MY MOM WAS GIVING ME A FRACKING CONDOM! My parents really were perfect for each other: they’d both made it their mission to humiliate me right before a date.
I snatched the square purple Durex wrapper and shoved it in my pocket. “Mom!” I whisper-shouted. “What if Tony saw that?!”
“What? Is it a crime that I want my only child to be responsible? You boys are young and hormonal. Just because I’m your silly old mom don’t you think for one second that I don’t know what hormones can lead to.”
“Ohmigawd, ohmigawd, ohmigawd. I have to go right now.”
Mom wriggled her fingers in the air. “Ta-ta. If you need any more, I put a whole box under your bathroom sink.”
And with that, I ran to Tony’s car. Of course, I couldn’t stop thinking about the condom in my pocket. Which made me think of that condom going on a penis. Tony’s penis. Cracking open my notebook and crossing off numbers seven and eight from the Gay Agenda thanks to Tony’s hard penis.
Hello, boner.
I vowed never to let Max dress me again. His pants were too fracking tight, and with a condom in my pocket, I had a feeling I was going to be worked up all night.
I opened the passenger-side door and plopped down, hoping there’d be some significant AC to cool me off. “Hey,” I panted. Why was I already out of breath?
As soon as I shut the door, Tony leaned over and gave me a kiss. There was no hesitation. He was just so confident and smooth. The kiss was hard and scruffy and longing, like he wanted to devour my entire body. Just like I remembered.
Tony’s lips totally didn’t help my boner situation. I wondered if I’d be able to make it through the date without spontaneously ejaculating.
“Been looking forward to this,” Tony said, leaning back and pulling out into the street.
“Me too.”
He smiled and bit his lip. I wanted so badly to be the one biting it. I figured lunging on top of him would have increased the odds of us crashing by about a million, so I decided to glance out the window and find something to take my mind off ravishing Tony. Of course the first thing that caught my eye was the Space Needle towering over the city. Giant phallus, giant phallus, giant phallus.
We pulled up to a stoplight, and Tony put his hand on my leg. The throbbing in my pants increased tenfold. “Hey,” he said. He was a man of way fewer words than Albert, but somehow, he made one syllable sound so sexy.
I swallowed. “Hey.”
Tony leaned forward and planted his mouth on mine again. Nothing about him was tender. He was forceful, like if he pressed hard enough our mouths could fuse together. I turned my whole body toward him so that he could get as much of my lips as he wanted. I lifted my hands to run through his hair and—
/> HOOOOOOONK! HONK, HONK, HONK!
“Oh shit! Green light!” I said, lurching back in my seat. “No distracting the driver, right?”
Tony gripped the steering wheel with one hand, using his other to roll down the window and flip off the honker. “Whatever. Fuck that guy.” He floored it and we sped forward.
“Yeah. F-f-fuck him.” I took a deep breath, trying to get some composure back so I could function as a talking person and not a walking erection. “So, off to your place?”
Tony smirked. “Excited, huh?” He put his hand on my thigh, dangerously close to my crotch, and squeezed. “We’ll get there. I have to make a stop first. But I promise I’ll make it fun.”
My mind went wild when he winked, imagining all the ways Tony could define fun. I tried to come up with something to say so I didn’t come across like a drooling moron, but there was no easy rapport like I had with Albert. I was too worked up to speak, afraid that the first word out of my mouth would be sex or dick or something along those lines. And Tony didn’t say anything either. He’d just occasionally look over and stroke my thigh, or bite his lip, and oh gawd, the sexual tension was so thick in that BMW you could have choked on it.
We finally pulled up to a bright blue building with a large sign that read “The Grand Illusion” and a tiny sign attached to that that said “Cinema.” My heart and one other attentive body part sank.
“A theater?” I blurted. A public place meant there was no possibility of any nakey-time fun.
“I know, a bit of a drag, but I’m dangerously close to failing my film criticism class. My professor said I could get some extra credit if I did a write-up of some movie they’re showing. But the plus side is this place is dark. Quiet.” He looked right into my eyes as he grasped the outrageously phallic gearshift to put the car in park. “Intimate.”
It was the sexiest extra credit assignment I’d ever heard of.
We climbed out of the car, the typical Seattle mist clinging to my arms. It did nothing to dampen the electric heat that went through me when Tony grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the theater.
“This place used to be a dentist’s office,” Tony explained. “But now they play movies instead of filling cavity holes and . . . drilling.”
“I could tell you’re a film buff by your deep love of Frozen,” I said, trying to replace the naked dentist movie flying through my head with wholesome images of Tony fully clothed in a Disney outfit.
We entered the lobby. The place looked nothing like a cinema or a dentist’s office, but more like a cute little house. The room’s hardwood floors and older charm looked a lot like our duplex’s living room, actually.
Tony laughed. It was scratchy and raspy, the audible manifestation of his scruff rubbing against my face while we made out.
“I bought that costume on Amazon and threw it on,” Tony said. “I’m not much for dressing up, but the Lambda Chi rule is anyone who doesn’t has to help the pledges clean.” He pulled out a twenty as we approached a woman sitting at a folding table with a tin cashbox and a roll of tickets. “One, please.”
My vision tunneled. He wasn’t into dressing up? He had to be joking. Costumes were like the one thing besides statistics that I was good at. It’s a good thing Tony just wanted to hook up because I could not be boyfriends with a guy who didn’t want to go all out for a theme.
The woman handed Tony a small stub. “Here you go, darlin’. One for you too?” She shook her roll of tickets at me. “Ten dollars.”
When it came to chivalry points, Albert got that one over Tony. Not that I expected anyone to pay for me, but still.
We ordered a tub of popcorn (I paid) and took it into the screening room. It was the only room in the place that resembled anything close to a theater, and an old-timey one at that. The room was pretty small with about thirty antique seats all covered in red velvet, and deep red curtains on either side of the screen. It looked like we were alone, the perfect setup to suck face with no one bothering us.
We sat in the back corner, and as if on cue, the lights dimmed. Make-out time!
I was instantly hard again. I turned to Tony, and he was already looking at me. He had a sexy eyebrow comma raised, his head cocked to the side. “So,” he said.
“So,” I breathed.
Tony leaned forward, the springs in his chair creaking loud enough that I hoped they covered the hammering of my heart.
His lips were just barely on mine when a beam of light blared through the room. A man in a beret had the flashlight on his phone glaring in front of him as he barreled into a seat just two down from ours.
“Seriously?” Tony moaned, his seat creaking again as he leaned back. “He’s gonna sit right ther—”
“Shhhhhh!” The bereted bastard insisted on ruining the moment.
Tony scowled in the guy’s direction, then bent forward and whispered in my ear, “Don’t worry. This can be fun.”
He moved his hand up the inside of my thigh, slowly, confidently, his pressure just perfect. It was a good thing I had a tub of popcorn in my lap to hide the Space Needle in my pants.
Tony leaned over, clearly going in for another kiss.
CREEEEEEAK. Those chairs needed some serious WD-40.
“Shhhhh!” Popcorn projectiles landed at my feet.
Okay, so kissing was going to be out of the question.
Thankfully, Tony kept running his index finger up and down the inseam of my jeans. Nothing had felt this good in my entire life, which was the saving grace for the ridiculous movie that played. It was just a kid running around the streets of Paris following a red balloon, occasionally saying, “Ballon!” and pointing up at the thing while it floated out of his reach. I did not get it at all.
But it was still the best movie I had ever seen because Tony’s hand kept getting closer and closer to there. Just like the balloon in the movie, I could’ve popped at any second.
Tony’s hand lingered just centimeters away from my crotch when the credits finally started to roll. “Wasn’t that great?” he said with a smirk.
I couldn’t get a word out. I could only nod.
“It’s the only short film to ever win an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.” Bereted Bastard was back, clearly a French-and-horrible-film enthusiast.
“That so?” Tony asked.
“Mmm. And next they’re showing—”
Tony held up his hand. “Unfortunately, we have somewhere to be.” He locked his fingers in mine and pulled me up. “Don’t we?”
His eyes gleamed when he grinned, telling me that somewhere he mentioned was in each other’s pants.
Tony led the way out of the theater, back into the drizzly streets. My skin was so hot that I’m sure I was surrounded by a cloud of steam. “Sorry about that,” Tony said. “Usually the old French films aren’t so crowded.”
“Usually? You come here a lot?”
Tony shrugged. “I’ve needed extra credit on more than one occasion. It’s typically just me and whoever I bring along. Like I said, intimate.”
So Tony brought guys there often. At first, it made me feel kind of cheap. Like I wasn’t worth the energy for Tony to come up with something original to do. But then I remembered that Max did say Tony was sexually open. I guess theater stroking was his preferred method of foreplay. And to be honest, he was really good at it. The way he’d gotten me so worked up just by running a finger down my leg made me want to know what other moves he had. Immediately.
I stepped forward and kissed him, hard.
Tony’s stubble rubbing against my lips drove me wild every single time. The prickles against my face sent shivers along my spine, and all I wanted to do was kiss Tony until I collapsed from being completely out of breath.
We stood there in the Seattle mist, getting drenched in dew and spit. When he pulled away, my whole body cried out for him to get back within mouth’s reach.
“Campus isn’t far,” Tony said, that signature smirk spreading up his lips. “Ready to see my ro
om?”
Oh yeah. I was ready.
19.
Go All the Way
The Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity looked way different when there wasn’t a party going on. There was no ice luge, no cascade of people streaming up and down the front staircase, and the floors didn’t shake one bit with bass. There was still the lingering smell of beer and boy, though.
“Yo, Tony, what up!” someone called when we stepped inside.
Tony gave one of those effortless, sort of bro-ish nods of acknowledgment that would have looked like I was spasming if I tried it. “Hey, Keegan.”
I looked over to see about a dozen guys sitting in front of a massive TV with controllers in their hands. Toad and Princess Daisy and Wario zoomed along the screen in a game of Mario Kart. My thoughts drifted to Albert. What would he think of me coming to a fraternity with a college boy and a condom in my pocket?
“Come play with us!” Keegan said.
“Can’t.” Tony grabbed my hand and pulled me up the staircase.
Keegan peered over his shoulder and caught us dashing up the stairs. “Gonna go play with your own joysticks, huh?”
All the guys in the room went “Oooooooooooh!” while I face-palmed. Yeah, I wanted us to play with our joysticks, but I didn’t want the whole fraternity talking about it.
Tony rolled his eyes when we reached the second floor. “They’re idiots.”
With Tony’s fraternity brothers out of sight, it really didn’t bother me so much, especially because now I could practically feel the condom pulsing in my pocket. Or was that something else?
I squeezed Tony’s hand. “It’s all right.”
Tony led us down the hall, which felt like it went on forever. We passed door after door, but none of them led to his room. If we didn’t get to his dorm stat, I was prepared to throw him against the wall and pounce.
“How many people live here?” I asked.
“About fifty guys,” Tony said, finally stopping in front of a door with the names Tony and Victor plastered on it. A bunch of tally marks were Sharpied under Tony’s name, twelve in all.
“What are those for?” As a guy who likes to keep track of things, I thought this might be something I had in common with Tony other than wanting to get it on.
